THE BOX - DIVYA GAITONDE

‘Gift wrapped’, she thought to herself. She looked out of the window into the startling blue sky. ‘How thoughtful, but of whom? Me? Did I do this to myself?’ Memory is a fickle thing. ‘Too smart for myself’, she sighed.
*Sigh* It slipped from her into the night air.
Outside, everything seemed calm. The horizon was far out in the distance, disguised as a thin line separating the sky from land, separating the land from the sea. Boundaries, like scars.
It was time.
With a whirr everything shifted. The sky, land and sea reshuffled themselves like a jackpot machine set in motion. As they settled down in a new combination, she held her breath in anticipation.
Ting! A smile. It worked like clockwork, every time. The dust settled. It always did. A jigsaw puzzle completed well in time. It had become a ritual for her now, to see the start of a new day.

Playing god. She was everywhere but still nowhere. The Santa Claus and the Wizard of Oz. Then she disappeared into someone less universal. Then she became me.
It might have been irritating, it was sometimes. Not today. Today, I pitied her. I had myself, she couldn’t say the same. How could you trust yourself if you were capable of fooling yourself? And successfully at that!

She had sent herself a box. She knew she would resist the box when she got it. . So, she had erased it from her own memory. What a fix she had gotten herself into! If she knew what was in it, she would never have opened it. If she opened it, she would be stuck for eternity. Eternity was a long time.


Enough of her, I had a life of my own to live. And so, I forgot about her, till I saw the box.
The box, the box, her box.
‘I’m yours’, it said to me.
‘Huh? But that’s not possible.’ ‘This goes against the rules.’

Thank god for rules! Or must I thank her? How does one function without rules and guidelines? It is vital is it not? Even if they don’t exist we do tend to make them up.

The curtains flickered. Or was it the light that flickered that made the curtains do the same?

All I knew was that it wasn’t mine.
The dilemma was running around in circles and dragging me with it. It was suffocating and releasing at the same time. It meant that I cared enough, or that she cared enough now that we had established our differences. Being two people is never easy. So she believed that it was the best she could do. It still choked though. It brought up unpleasant memories of dusty gulps of air and dirty nails. Like war, but only in your head; exclusively, for the mind. The outside was such a different world: Pleasant and almost sweet smelling. But some dourness from the mind had seeped out. There were always cracks. The system was such.
Oh dear, what can the matter be? The problem’s right over the chair. It sat across the room looking sheepishly at me. We both knew it was time. A brown box made of corrugated sheet, the wrapping had long since disappeared. What was in it? Pandora’s Box had happy things in it as well, didn’t it? Maybe it sensed my thoughts, maybe it didn’t, but it was more excited than it was a few moments earlier. My soul mate! What a treacherous word. It loathingly sat. I hate it! I hate it! The very idea of it! Life does not revolve around love, does it? At least not for me it didn’t.
A hand came out of it and held mine. Fine then, no more fighting. But I knew I would. That was just it. Maybe I could buy some more time. I could convince. Deep inside, she knew there was no going back.

AVY COMMENTS:
It’s got a great feel and I like the interplay between the two characters who are one, rite?
However, the shift between personae and thing is kind of disconcerting and makes it tough to catch.
It’s good but again, the end is kind of weak. I think if it ends at “A hand came out of it and held mine.”, it would be great.
Otherwise, you need to give the reader some clue as to why you end it the way you have done.
More clarity would help.